And Betteridge’s Law may not hold the answer, in this case. You make the call after reading this post.

A few days back, I tweeted out something I noticed when checking out the new Google Maps – the Indian states of Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh were entirely listed as dotted lines (See below) instead of solid, indicating Google considered them, at best, disputed territories, and at worst, not part of India.

My limited understanding of international politics notwithstanding, I know that most maps these days split Kashmir in 3, to indicate regions controlled by India, and the ones not controlled by India. Additionally, the state of Arunachal Pradesh has been a point of contention between India and China for the better part of the last century. So, my assumption was that Google Maps was reflecting the same.

However, after a brief interaction over Twitter, my findings are as follows: Google Maps displays the state of Arunachal Pradesh as disputed territory (image on left) when you access it from the US (and perhaps, the rest of the world) but when you access Google Maps from India, the state of Arunachal Pradesh is shown as an integral part of India (image on right).

This post is not intended to stir “patriotic fervor” between Indians, Pakistanis and the Chinese but rather to encourage a discussion on how big technology companies are starting to indulge in politics, at an international level. Please feel free to add to this discussion in the comments space below.

Ramachandra Guha performs a colonoscopy of sorts on the close-minded, anti-intellectual, cliche-riddled, demagoguery that passes for the ideology of the Hindu extremist outfit, the RSS. [Telegraph] (via @pragmatic_d on Twitter)

It’s a fascinating read with real-life accounts from former RSS-ers and includes some hilarious points, for instance, what was the RSS’s stand during the Quit India movement?

However, the portion that stood out to me most:

“Hindus have lived in India since time immemorial; Hindus are the nation because all culture, civilization and life is contributed by them alone; non-Hindus are invaders or guests and cannot be treated as equal unless they adopt Hindu traditions, culture etc…; the history of India is the history of the struggle of the Hindus for protection and preservation of their religion and culture against the onslaught of these aliens; the threat continues because the power is in the hands of those who do not believe in this nation as a Hindu Nation; those who talk of national unity as the unity of all those who live in this country are motivated by the selfish desire of cornering minority votes and are therefore traitors; the unity and consolidation of the Hindus is the dire need of the hour because the Hindu people are surrounded on all sides by enemies; the Hindus must develop the capacity for massive retaliation and offence is the best defence; lack of unity is the root cause of all the troubles of the Hindus and the Sangh is born with the divine mission to bring about that unity.”

Replace “Hindus” with “White Christians”, “India” with “USA” and “non-Hindus” with “immigrants”,”Muslims” or “any other minority group” in the above paragraph and you have the template of a conservative talk show host in the US. Fascinating, huh?

Finally, the elections are over. I for one am very thankful that my nightly TV watching is not interrupted by moronic ads in which politicians on both sides try to outdo each other in demonizing their opponents- complete with unflattering photos and rhetoric that comes close to slander.

Nikki Haley made history by becoming the first female Indian-American Governor in the USA. Now we will have two serving Governors of Indian origin , as she joins Bobby Jindal ( who you can see in the flesh elsewhere on this site !).

This election was historic for desis as we had a record number of desi origin candidates in the fray

At the time of writing neither Raj Goyle of Kansas nor Manan Trivedi in California was going to make it. Raj Goyle ’s opponent had billboards up urging voters to “Vote American” in an obviously bigoted attempt at questioning Goyle’s American-ness based on his ethnicity. If nothing else: this election is good in that it reminds us how far the community has to go before we can truly be considered a viable politically influential group.

We went through this soul-searching the last time round when Bobby Jindal was elected. While I may not agree with any of his positions, it still felt good to know that someone out there was opening doors for Indian Americans. I realized I do not need to endorse a candidate in order to celebrate their success.

Just because I am fed up with being the resident anti – sexist, anti – objectification blogger, I present in all his glory our very own Bobby Jindal. This is part of a truly tasteless Vanity Fair “Red Meat” calendar featuring GOP men in various,photoshopped states of undress. On a serious note: I completely disapprove of this. Imagine if they had tried this with GOP women,I would have been the first to cry “Foul”!

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

Translation: One of the major driving factors for Independence was the anti-immigration stance of the King of England. In the light of July 4th and Obama’s recent speech on immigration, the whole issue of immigration merits another discussion. [WSJ Transcript]

For the sake of brevity, I’m skipping past most of the rhetoric and highlighting points from Obama’s speech that are relevant to this discussion. Obama starts by admitting that the immigration system is fundamentally broken.

Immigration reform is no exception. In recent days, the issue of immigration has become once more a source of fresh contention in our country, with the passage of a controversial law in Arizona and the heated reactions we’ve seen across America. Some have rallied behind this new policy. Others have protested and launched boycotts of the state. And everywhere, people have expressed frustration with a system that seems fundamentally broken.

Obama goes on to wax eloquent on some famous immigrants and acknowledge the contributions of the millions of faceless immigrants. He makes it a point to state that immigrants come to this country not only seeking employment, but also end up creating employment for Americans.

Just a few weeks ago, we had an event of small business owners at the White House. And one business owner was a woman named Prachee Devadas who came to this country, became a citizen, and opened up a successful technology services company. When she started, she had just one employee. Today, she employs more than a hundred people. This past April, we held a naturalization ceremony at the White House for members of our armed forces. Even though they were not yet citizens, they had enlisted. One of them was a woman named Perla Ramos — born and raised in Mexico, came to the United States shortly after 9/11, and she eventually joined the Navy. And she said, “I take pride in our flag and the history that forged this great nation and the history we write day by day.”

the ink on our Constitution was barely dry when, amidst conflict, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which placed harsh restrictions of those suspected of having fo reign allegiances. A century ago, immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Poland, other European countries were routinely subjected to rank discrimination and ugly stereotypes. Chinese immigrants were held in detention and deported from Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. They didn’t even get to come in.

Illegal immigrants has always been contentious and Obama acknowledges their presence, the challenges they face and the issues their presence poses to the system.

The result is an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. The overwhelming majority of these men and women are simply seeking a better life for themselves and their children. Many settle in low-wage sectors of the economy; they work hard, they save, they stay out of trouble. But because they live in the shadows, they’re vulnerable to unscrupulous businesses who pay them less than the minimum wage or violate worker safety rules -– thereby putting companies who follow those rules, and Americans who rightly demand the minimum wage or overtime, at an unfair [dis]advantage. Crimes go unreported as victims and witnesses fear coming forward. And this makes it harder for the police to catch violent criminals and keep neighborhoods safe. And billions in tax revenue are lost each year because many undocumented workers are paid under the table.

While most politicians including Presidents before Obama have acknowledged illegals and suggested ways of dealing with this issue, Obama is one of the few and perhaps the first to acknowledge the impact of illegal immigrants on legal migration, which is one of my primary interests in this speech.

More fundamentally, the presence of so many illegal immigrants makes a mockery of all those who are going through the process of immigrating legally. Indeed, after years of patchwork fixes and ill-conceived revisions, the legal immigration system is as broken as the borders. Backlogs and bureaucracy means the process can take years. While an applicant waits for approval, he or she is often forbidden from visiting the United States –- which means even husbands and wives may be forced to spend many years apart. High fees and the need for lawyers may exclude worthy applicants. And while we provide students from around the world visas to get engineering and computer science degrees at our top universities, our laws discourage them from using those skills to start a business or power a new industry right here in the United States. Instead of training entrepreneurs to create jobs on our shores, we train our competition.

Clearly, one doesn’t need to look any further than the F1 (student visas) and H1B (high tech workers visa) systems which personify all of the issues stated above. Beginning with visa interviews in their native countries, students seeking F1 visas are required to deal with all kinds of bureaucratic minefields, regardless of their academic achievements. Following graduation, from accredited US universities, the same students are required to find a job in 12 months (29 months in some cases) on an OPT, failing which these students trained to become productive members of the American workforce, are forced to return home. This was in good economic times, so needless to say that the number of highly skilled foreign students leaving US shores to return home has increased exponentially during this economic downturn.

Even if they manage to procure that elusive H1B visa, these high-tech workers become tied to a certain organization. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, the power to make and break a person’s life and career can certainly be misused, and is misused in a lot of cases. Even with the right organizations, the H1B worker has to wait nearly a decade to attain permanent residency, until which point they are unable to leave their current employers or start their own businesses. After a decade, if and when a highly skilled legal immigrant manages to procure this evasive permanent residency, they are still second class citizens who lack the right to vote or any such liberties afforded to citizens. Lawyer fees and bureaucratic processes further complicate the naturalization process.

While we all agree that the immigration system is broken, the disagreement seems to be on the steps that need to be taken to fix this. While Obama’s speech acknowledges the problem and offers some solutions, the latter half of the immigration speech skims issues facing skilled immigration and focuses more on the illegal immigration aspect. While tackling illegal immigration is important, keeping highly skilled legal immigrants in this country, stemming reverse brain drain, should also be made a priority. Vivek Wadhwa (@vwadhwa) had an excellent op-ed on this very issue last year.

What are your thoughts on the immigration issue? Use the comments section below and keep it clean.